The Need to Stir Up Ethical Practices in Learning and Development

Vijay Anand, Founder & Chief learning Officer Hirington Academy

The industry as we know it is scripting success stories all over again. A proven track record and a vast market, automatically makes India the preferred destination for businesses. This time around, stakes are high in a country like ours where the youth population is more than any other country in the world. An estimated 150 million youth will be ready for the employment in next 5 years in India. As new technologies, skills and tools are getting introduced day by day, training and development is going to play even more important roles in enabling youth into talent. The growth prospect of the training industry has been increasing year on year. Indian companies are also making their impression at the global level; obviously the work force needs to posses the global standards. Many MNCs are opening up their establishments in India and their expectations have always been global. Today's modern organizations strongly believe training and development as a retention tool and not a cost center. Any skill development organization that is ethical, unique and has high vision is bound to survive in the current scenario.

Finding A Way Out of TroublesApart from fresh talents, there is a huge amount of need to develop the capabilities of the experienced employees on the emerging technologies. Without even having proper content, syllabus, process and infrastructure we are seeing many letter pad companies start their own training venture and one day disappear from the market. By this way they disturb the ethical practitioners by bidding training programs for lower cost. Some trainers provide fake certifications for money, and if anybody ever manages to complete training modules, then maximum of it is by copy paste of the content from other training organizations. Everyone should come out of the mindset of cashing in on the opportunity. Trainers and training organizations are responsible for serving this nation by keeping the workforce ready for the upcoming challenges. Say no to unethical practices and quick money. Government of India and various capability enrichment bodies has taken many skill development initiatives to groom the job seeker community. The chances must be kept in favor of capable trainers. It is best to follow customized syllabus based on the individual capability and encourage practical and assignment oriented programs. Apart from the accreditation, the government of India needs to do fair and open audit on the training and development companies. Most of them try to capture the Corporate Social Responsibility funds for the training and development on internal employees but miserably fail to make an impression. An organization needs to come out with the names of training companies that conduct programs for just name sake and remove them from their vendor empanelment list. Doing such programs at bits and pieces will turn out inefficient. The demand of the situation is to measure the efficiency of every training program and the follow up after completion of the program to make it a continuous learning that will groom the real talents.

A CLO's Work Has to Be DiverseA Chief Learning Officer started with just a trainer's tag initially. Later, people felt that only animals alone can be trained and not human beings. They realized that after learning, there needs to be a development and a result. Hence, the name "Learning and Development" came into practice. CLO's have now become like a talent development partner than just training the workforce. Modernizing the L&D infrastructure to build platforms and architectures for informal learning, building future leaders than just equipping people for one particular task, serving as the "chief talent executive" for business leaders to help them attract, develop, and carefully manage the critical workforce in place. Though relationships with company functions associated with strategic HR, business communications, strategic planning, and information management are critical to driving organizational learning as a key business strategy, the CLO, as well, is very closely aligned with the profession of organizational development. Insisting quality, implementing process, key decision making, role playing are the skills that CLO brings inside every organization and the individuals. I have realized that some people come for skill enrichment alone, some come for the value of our certification; some come to us just for the sake that their management has nominated them. Knowing your crowd is very much important than proposing a generic program for everyone. CLO has to take various avatar based on time and need. Be a career counselor for people who has no direction in life, a guide when some struggles, a sales person to sell the right program to right people, and a project manager to make the client understand the requirement. A common thread weaved throughout is institutionalizing an organizational learning culture that supports and reinforces the integration of these seven elements. It is important that the CLO be able to operate both internally and externally to the organization in developing learning and performance services.